Stuart McGurk is GQ's Associate Editor and the 2017 PPA Magazine Writer of the Year. Follow him on Twitter @stuartmcgurk

Thursday 2 August 2018

There are a lot of “fucks” in HBO’s kinetic, ribald new drama, Succession, and only some of them are written in the script. Nearly everyone, you realise, is a fuck. There's also a fair amount of fucking.

Directed by Adam “The Big Short” McKay, among others, and created by Jesse Armstrong, writer of Peep Show, The Thick Of It and Four Lions, it centres on a Murdoch-esque clan of siblings and its gruff octogenarian patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), who’s expected to leave them his huge media empire. Except, despite fading health and questionable mental acuity, he suddenly decides not to.

There are four children here, rather than the Murdoch six, but it’s not hard to figure out who’s (loosely) based on whom. There’s Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), the presumed heir apparent, but one with past drug issues and the look of a man forever planning the escape route from any room he’s in. There’s Roman (Kieran Culkin), the no-good son who’s into the power for the sex and the sex for the power, but wants no part in the consequences of either. There’s the daughter, appropriately named Shiv (Sarah Snook), a political operative not against using her father’s influence to take an opponent out. And finally there’s the eldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck), from Logan’s first marriage, a gangly farmer-philanthropist who’s into charitable donations but not necessarily who’s being donated to.

Advertisement

SKY / HBO

In The West Wing, that show of serious civil servants doing good and looking good while doing it, conversations would often end with a poignant “OK”. Sometimes it would be a hurt “OK”, occasionally an angry “OK”, but mostly it was an “OK” meant to convey, broadly, two very smart people understanding something complex and grave with ramifications far beyond the things said. In Succession most conversations end with “fuck off”. Sometimes it’s simply a corporate “fuck off” (“Meeting over. Fuck off”). Sometimes it’s a let’s-fuck “fuck off” (“I love you”; “I’m not sure I love you”; “Yeah, you do”; “Fuck off” – cue sex). But mostly it is the tip of the sword in a constant conversational combat: from a shiv under the ribs after the feint of a fake question has pulled an opponent close (“No. Fuck off”) to a simple dismissive thrown out to merely show you’ve won (“Fuck off”).

Read next

The Long Song: Good drama, shame about the voiceover

Set in the final days of slavery in 19th-century Jamaica, the BBC's new drama is lavish but its post-modern voiceover is like being constantly digged in the ribs by someone who's seen it before

ByStuart McGurk

Succession occupies a world of gleaming Manhattan apartments and sterile office buildings, but at its heart we’re under no illusions that it’s animal and primal and messy and disgusting. When the feckless Roman revels in his new office and the view of New York it provides, he draws the blinds behind him, presses himself against the window and masturbates. Talk about getting off on power.

The show opens with Logan, seemingly disorientated and urinating on his own landing. Later, returning to his company after his illness, he finds his son now installed as CEO and wanders into his office to urinate on his floor. Is an old dog losing his mind? Or is a big beast marking his territory? Cleverly, Succession leaves us with a third option: it could be both.

Advertisement

The best shows defy genre – The Sopranos was often more funny than dramatic – yet Succession doesn’t so much defy genre as pogo between several. One minute it’s all docu-style reaction shots, the next broad and scatological, the next we’re HD swooping behind Roy’s helicopters over the Hudson.

Sometimes it switches mid-scene, like when Kendall hugs his ex-wife after a stressful day – and gets an erection. But the moment remains still, not silly, and a little bit melancholy.

“It’s... just the adrenaline,” he says quietly. “It’s... just my body.”

Read next

Christmas Day TV: the eight best things to watch

We've picked out the eight best things to watch post-lunch

ByKarina Patel

SKY / HBO

Advertisement

Succession is about a lot of things – a satire of the Murdochs and the Trumps, a show about how extreme wealth warps extremely, how power makes people believe they’re impervious to penalty – but at its heart it’s about what happens when the dual infantilisations of family and extreme wealth combine. How far from making people more adult, it only makes them more of a toddler, screaming for their father’s favour. It makes them terrible humans, yet oddly compelling characters.

Even failure is fought over. When Kendall bemoans the tanking share price since he took over as CEO, his brother Roman, the new COO, protests: “Hey! That’s me too! Don’t leave me out.”

Just as The Sopranos took regular relationships and ratcheted them up to mafia level, so here family isn’t just family. It’s conspiracy. When Kendall takes over, for instance, he finds the company is secretly billions in debt and has a disaster looming (“I hope I haven’t spoilt your moment,” he’s told on the top of a building, a minute after taking charge. “Don’t jump”). When Shiv’s husband is given a seemingly cushy job running the company’s leisure division, he is instantly told about a scandal-in-waiting. It’s like he’s got a virus, he explains to an underling, because as soon as he tells anyone, he infects them too – and they instantly become a coconspirator.

SKY / HBO

Read next

Watch the People Just Do Nothing characters hijack GQ Hype

Consider this a Kurupt FM takeover

ByKathleen Johnston

And that, perhaps, is what Succession does best. We all know the taut strings that bind money and sex and power. But Succession pulls those strings close and shows what would happen if they were all one.

It’s no better shown than in the standout fourth episode, which culminates in a charity gala where Roman finds a waiter chatting up his date. He tells the waiter to go ahead. Ask for her number. Don’t worry. It’s only later we see the true purpose. “Did you tell him to call?” he asks his date later, in the bedroom. The phone vibrates, and as it does he pushes it up her and she moans. Getting off on power once again. Getting fucked by it too.